


What Came Before?

by Cloudy



Series: The Devil is a Gentleman [7]
Category: Magic Kaito
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Black Org Saguru, Gen, M/M, Not quite established relationship but not quite...not that, Oops Kaito accidentally triggered...something, black org au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudy/pseuds/Cloudy
Summary: “…Before?”“It isn’t relevant.”“When was before?”“Leave it alone, Kaito.”Kaito can't ever leave something well enough alone, once it's piqued his interest. Kaito makes a significant discovery about Armagnac.
Relationships: Hakuba Saguru & Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid, Hakuba Saguru/Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid
Series: The Devil is a Gentleman [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2097753
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	What Came Before?

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is another one that takes place a little ways into the future. I'll bridge the gap eventually ;) Just understand at this point that they've got a fragile... friendship? Something more? The lines are fuzzy, for them.

_“So, you were born into this.”_

_“In a manner of speaking. Although, I don’t have any family.”_

_“No family—like, in the organization? How did you wind up there, then?”_

_“The syndicate saw an opportunity and they took it. I don’t remember much from before.”_

_“…Before?”_

_“It isn’t relevant.”_

_“When was before?”_

_“Leave it alone, Kaito.”_

Kaito couldn’t leave it alone, though.

It was easy to forget that Armagnac was just a person, just some guy his own age who happened to be wrapped up in a situation that rivaled Kaito’s own. And being a person meant that he was someone who should, conceivably, have family or something.

But Armagnac said that he couldn’t remember, so Kaito had taken to researching missing children. It was a morbid subject in general, but he was too invested to give up just because the subject material made him uncomfortable. Based on what few breadcrumbs he’d picked up from his time around Armagnac, he had been in the syndicate at least as early as five years old or so. So the span of time when he would have been close to that age seemed like a good place to start. Armagnac had also mentioned once that his first language was Japanese, so Kaito thought it might be fair to start with the assumption he might be able to stick to missing people in Japan, rather than internationally—at least for now.

Researching missing children was admittedly a much more challenging task than Kaito might have originally planned for—thanks both to the amount as well as the sheer fact that it was a really depressing topic to look into in the first place.

It took him days of returning to the search results in snatches of free time to get to the point where he thought he might have a conclusive theory to work off of. If he was right, it was a shockingly high-profile case that had never been resolved. A child kidnapped from the Hakuba family, a prevalent enough family in Tokyo. Kaito recognized the name because as it would turn out, the man whose son was missing currently held a position as the TMPD’s Superintendent General.

It was actually one of the first results he’d found, but originally he didn’t think it fit very well. After all, in the case of that kidnapping, there had originally been a demand for ransom and everything. Not to mention the amount of attention the case got early on. Hakuba Takahiro and his foreign wife were both people of note who had a lot of influence. Reports detailing their missing son often went to great lengths highlighting their son’s unusually gifted nature.

The thing was, if there had been a demand for ransom, wouldn’t that usually mean the likelihood of some sort of resolution, good or bad? The missing kid in this case was still just that: missing. It was that uncertainty that got Kaito looking back at it after a demoralizing amount of dead ends.

It took some digging to get to the bottom of it, but it turned out that when police had tried to corner the kidnappers, they had found a more or less abandoned warehouse with nobody inside. No new instructions, no body, nothing.

Except, apparently, some remnants of dried blood that had almost gone overlooked. Though recent, it hadn’t matched up to the kid’s blood type, so they concluded it unrelated.

The investigation stayed open for a long time after that, but no new leads ever surfaced.

_The syndicate saw an opportunity and they took it._

Maybe it was a long shot, but Kaito wondered if the original kidnapping had been the typical cut-and-dry deal of taking a child from an influential family and holding them ransom, but something had sent the plan off course. Like another, more competent and aggressive party swooping in and taking the chance to snag him while he was already unsupervised, when it could be attributed to some petty criminals instead of something more sophisticated.

He could just be reading into it too much. But the pieces fit if he angled them all the right way. And if he dismissed it, the case looked all too suspicious anyway. What if Armagnac really was Hakuba Asuka?* The only way to be sure would be to try and find out.

—

Somehow, somewhere down the line, Armagnac had become some kind of fixture in Kaito’s life. Neither one of them was really sure when it became so concrete. But at some point, it stopped feeling terrifying, or even weird to have the syndicate operative in his home.

It didn’t happen all the time, but here he was now, dropping by late into the evening. Kaito sat at the kitchen counter with books, tablet, and notepads strewn across the surface—pretending to do homework while he planned out his upcoming heist. If Armagnac asked, he was working on physics. But, Armagnac didn’t ask—and probably he wouldn’t have believed Kaito anyway.

Peering up from his work, Kaito watched Armagnac. His fingers of his left hand trailed almost absentmindedly along the underside of the edge of the counter top as he reached into a cupboard to retrieve the tea. He’d seen him do it a million times, and recognized the gesture because it was something that Kaito caught himself doing as well now and then (and even more, now that Armagnac was around more regularly): checking for bugs or some other discrete surveillance. Kaito had asked before if Armagnac thought there was any reason to suspect that the syndicate might’ve caught onto the same things that Armagnac himself had—the other boy had assured him that they weren’t there yet, and if they were put onto the scent then he would provide warning.

Privately, Kaito had worried that maybe that checking-for-bugs tic was actually Armagnac trying to plant his own surveillance tools. For all Armagnac had grown on him, Kaito of course still couldn’t quite shake his suspicion. But neither of them had once encountered any listening devices in Kaito’s home, so Kaito was at least mostly certain that Armagnac wouldn’t plant anything himself.

“Hey,” Kaito said casually as he could, turning his gaze back toward his notes. In his periphery, Armagnac was gravitating toward him. He saw the other’s hand settle against the counter top.

“What is it?” he inquired.

Well, here it goes. Kaito was sure Armagnac would be upset with him. _Leave it alone,_ he’d said. But Kaito figured he could handle some irritation, or even anger. Besides, he was probably off base, anyway. “Does the name ‘Hakuba Asuka’ mean anything to you?” As he asked, he looked up, propping his chin in his palm.

The shift was immediate. A sudden burst of desperate, violent, action.

The clicking of a gun’s safety.

A horror-filled standstill.

In an instant, Kaito watched Armagnac transform from relatively at ease and casual to a honed and deadly weapon. The gun drawn in a way that KID might envy—from seemingly nowhere, instantaneous.

The barrel was right in his face. Armagnac’s finger was not on the trigger. There was a faint tremor in his hand.

Kaito almost didn’t hear Armagnac’s steely voice over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. “Say it again.”

Maybe he’d had it on the mark, then.

“…I don’t think you want me to do that,” Kaito said slowly, his tongue leaden with panic in his mouth, still trying to reconcile the change in demeanor. Instinct screamed: get away get away get away. Sudden movements weren’t going to help him here, though, no matter how much he wanted to throw down a smoke bomb and vanish.

For several heartbeats, nothing changed. They were suspended like this, gripped in some horrible terror. It seemed like Armagnac was somewhere else entirely, with how distant his eyes looked.

And then, the moment passed. Armagnac swore, something vicious and pained. He put the safety back on and put the gun away as if it may go off on its own if he didn’t, a desperate sort of urgency. Kaito’s heart still beat like a jackhammer against his ribcage, and his carefully tamped down reaction morphed itself into anger.

“What the _hell_?” It came out louder than he meant for it.

That distant expression held firm. When he spoke, Armagnac’s voice was stony. “That was uncalled for. I—apologize. It _will not_ happen again.” This, said with conviction. And then, “And you will not say that name again.”

Armagnac had his arms at his sides. Kaito saw that his hands were still shaking. Whatever this reaction was, Kaito was sure that Armagnac wasn’t okay.

“I won’t,” Kaito said, although not without reluctance. He resented that this little research project of his had backfired so terribly and he was still pretty angry about having a gun angled at his head.

Tense silence.

“I won’t say it anymore,” Kaito started again, “but, what was that?” Although still angry—and righteously so, he thought—he asked it a little more gently this time. No less insistent, though.

Armagnac opened his mouth like he might answer, then closed it. His hands curled into fists, slow and methodical. His knuckles were white and his face was similarly drained of color. He closed his eyes and turned away from Kaito. Kaito kept his gaze fixed on him, unwilling to let him walk away from this when he still wanted an answer.

In the wake of his outburst, Armagnac seemed smaller, somehow. Fragile was not a word Kaito would attribute to him, but just now, that seemed like a close descriptor. It was like he was an injured animal.

Or, more accurately, an animal that had been beaten down so many times that it had to assume it was at risk of new injury at every turn.

“I asked you to leave ‘before’ alone. Allow me to reiterate that. For all intents and purposes, there _is_ no ‘before the syndicate,’ for me. I need you to understand that.” Kaito could tell he was trying not to place emphasis on _need_ , but he heard it anyway.

Kaito’s outrage compounded.

Armagnac had a name, had a measly five-or-so years of childhood, and the organization had snatched it away from him and shattered it into something painful. Twisted it into something that Armagnac couldn’t touch without getting hurt. Despite the vagueness of the explanation, Kaito had enough to understand that he had unwittingly used a weapon of the organization’s making against Armagnac. They shouldn’t have that kind of power.

Kaito rose from his seat. Armagnac remained where he stood. Kaito made a point of letting his footfalls make sound, so there was no risk of sneaking up on him.

Physical touch for them was still a foreign language that they were only just grasping the fundamentals of, but once he was close enough, Kaito chanced touching Armagnac’s hand anyway.

His clenched fist uncurled. Kaito’s index finger trailed along the outer line of his thumb. Armagnac didn’t pull away.

“I’m—” Kaito faltered, trying to find the words to say, the way to show Armagnac that he was sorry. “I think it’d be nice—if I could call you something other than the name they gave you. That’s why I went looking. I’ll leave it alone now, but—isn’t there anything else you want to be called instead?”

Armagnac was silent so long that Kaito figured he was going to brush off the question altogether. It seemed like the kind of thing he’d dismiss out of hand. Instead, his fingers brushed against Kaito’s as he said, “I’ll get back to you on that.”

A small triumph, then.

**Author's Note:**

> *for plot reasons, his given name when he was little was not Saguru. That name will come into play later. I might also change what his given name was. For now, though, Asuka. Written as: 飛鳥 (flying bird).


End file.
